Apples For the Eyes - Esther

It’s autumn! By far the best season & I don’t know how it’s been with you, but here it’s alternated wet, windy & cold days with crisp, sunny but biting days. Of all the seasons (such as they are thanks to global warming), it’s the one that prepares us best for what is to come. Some years more than others autumn encourages us to get used to the cold & the interminable darkness. Autumn warns us to ready ourselves; it reminds us to stock up & hunker down. Autumn drops everything & urges us to do the same…

But we don’t. We end up picking up whatever bounty autumn offers. Like rhubarb, apples are something we give each other for free. If you’re lucky enough to have a friend or relative with an apple tree, they often have more apples than they can handle.  I love when this happens & they bring you a box & ask, “You wanting apples?” knowing full well I do. I can feel my eyes light up with genuine gratitude, even if the friend says, “The worms have got to them.”

Whether they’re wormy or not, an apple is full of promise: the seeds inside with the potential for a tree & more apples, all the myriad foods they can be turned into (crumble) & as we shall see, an enormous amount of art of varying styles & genres. After all, an apple is a great subject, containing shedloads of fairy/folktale & religious symbolism, becoming a logo & arguably being one of the most used objects in still life art. It’s been bitten, it’s been poisoned, it’s been accused of being two-faced & representing sin, it’s the Universe. Apples are emblematic of sex & fertility (of course!) & they are entirely earthly. 

It’s a good thing there are always plenty of them. They’ve got more possibilities than you could shake a toffee apple stick at.

Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022) & Coosje van Bruggen (1942-2009), Apple Core (1992)

Of course, once an apple is used, it’s considered to be rubbish. It creates peel, seeds & stalk that we don’t used. Interpreted as a comment on the consumer society, degradation of the environment & a modern throw-away mentality, Claes & Coosje’s core is on the large scale they were famous for. There are several Apple Cores & this one is installed in Israel.

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), The Basket of Apples (1893)

Some of Cézanne’s best-known works are still lifes of apples. He’s painted the ones with worms or the delicious shiny ones but always in his own style, stating, “with an apple, I want to astonish Paris.” In fact, this painting challenged the entirety of art history with its rejection of single point perspective & any attempt at realistic portrayal. Had it not been for Cézanne, Cubism might never have happened.

Albert Anker (1831-1910), Stillleben mit drei Äpfeln und Zeitung (?)

This little watercolour depicts what one might do after washing the (worm-damaged) apples – place them on a newspaper to drip dry before peeling, coring & cooking them. Despite its apparent simplicity, Anker has included a fair amount of detail on the skins to achieve a more realistic appearance. 

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Still Life with Apples & Grapes (1880)

Most artists couldn’t get away with such blatant two-tone apples. With the placement of the cloth, the rippling effect of his brushstrokes & the tumbling fruit, Monet has created a waterfall effect which harks back to the sliding-off-the-table warning of the Masters before him. Life is tenuous he says. We could all tip over into eternal sleep at any time…

Luis Meléndez (1716-1780), Still Life with Watermelons & Apples in a Landscape (18th Century)

For once, the apples are hugely upstaged but there is compelling evidence of worms.

François Barraud (1899-1934), Toile de Jouy (1932)

Berraud’s works are little treasures. This is a beautifully crisp & again, seemingly simple painting but it is so well-lit & well executed that it feels at once realistic & evocative of studio life.

Levi Wells Prentice (1851-1935), Landscape With Apple Tree (c. 1890)

Unusually, the apples in question still hang from the tree & provide a beautiful & natural frame for the view beyond.

Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556), Christ Taking Leave of His Mother (1521)

At first, we might miss the apple altogether, but surprisingly for the 16th Century, it’s placed, barely there, towards us - the viewer - as if we’re gazing in at the scene. The dinky detail shows Lotto's cleverly-placed signature. A popular subject at the time, Jesus is saying goodbye to his mother before heading off for certain execution. A bit like a horribly ill-fated gap year.

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), Forbidden Fruit (1969)

Whilst typically odd & queasy for Carrington’s work, we can easily see the intended religious significance & interpret the inherent symbolism for ourselves. Her works almost strike me as more dreamlike than any other Surrealist’s. 

Édouard Manet (1832-1883), Still Life With Two Apples (c. 1880)

It’s fair to say that Manet produced paintings of much more tasty & believable-looking apples, but where’s the fun in that? These fantastic scribbled off efforts are much more evocative of the time of year we’re gathering them up, when all is gloom & the interminably dark winter is drawing in. Probable worms.

John George Brown (1831-1913), The Cider Mill (1880)

Oh yes. Apples also make pretty tasty alcoholic beverages. & if ever a 19th Century painting looked like a posed polaroid, it’s surely this.

Max Weber (1881-1961), Still Life with Apples (1928)

This lithograph is sometimes shown in a watery hand-coloured version, but I think the black & white version has a more satisfying impact.

Paul Klee (1879-1940), Still Life with Four Apples (1909)

Again, a “Paul” tinkers with the traditional linear perspective to produce something that still feels new today. Looking deeply into what at first appears to be a very dark, gloomy & possibly intense painting, we see Klee has used a pretty extensive palette. This to me feels more like an apple portrait than a still life. It may simply be the angle, but I don’t think so. These apples have personality & they're gazing back.